Thursday, December 21, 2006

The Stockholm Syndrome

Subtitled: Still looking for something Sweder ...

I made use of the cheapest round trip ticket imaginable (.02 Euro + taxes and fees) to visit one of the most expensive cities on the planet (mixed drinks for about 10 Euro, coffee for about 4 or 5 Euro -- the Italians in the group were almost in revolt) ...


Stockholm ... where the sun rises at 10AM and has set again by 2PM, and everything is covered by a perpetual layer of frost ....




Christmas markets were everywhere ... where one could enjoy a warm seasonal Glogg



One of my favorite parts was this open air ice rink where I found that I could skate as well as some of the Swedes ... which seemed somewhat unnatural (particularly for someone originally from Texas)


Numerous museums (mostly free) ... my favorite was the Alfred Nobel Museum (ironically, the man who endowed the Peace Price is most well known for his invention of dynamite) which featured an exhibition of the paitings of Winston Churchill



By far the highlight of the trip was a day trip I took to Sodertalje to see a Swedish Master's League Ice Hockey Match (SSK vs. Bjorkloven) ... Swedish hockey is beautiful thing ... much more fluid with more finese and less sluggish boards play ... the crowd was equally appreciative and amazingly attentive to the game as well ... In the picture below, if you zoom in on #33 (upper left), you will see one of the purest smiles -- which, afterall, is what hockey is all about



2 comments:

Brian J. said...

haha nice subtitle. Way to face stockholm.

It would definitely be sweet to go there sometime... I don't know about that frost thing though-- I'm getting tired of it already!

the last couple of mornings it's been about 10 deg F and has gotten down to about 5 deg at night = broken credit cards on windshields. haha I'm sure you remember.

Hope all your travels are still going well.

Merry Christmas!

cheers,

--B.J.

a+c said...

Awesome pictures! The travelling must be great.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Coral